Is this a Nursery Story?

In an interview with the Guardian, Paul Nurse says in connection with FOI:

I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it’s intimidating

I haven’t heard of any incidents in which anyone requested “drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive version”, let alone “lots of requests” of this nature to multiple scientists.

Are any readers aware of any such requests? Or is this more fantasizing by climate scientists? Like the time reversal mechanism assumed by Nature when they blamed data obstruction by climate scientists back in 2005 on FOI requests in summer 2009.

100 Comments

Could he have been referring to the Walh-Briffa correspondence and his then-yet-to-be published work with regards to the IPCC report? Does that count as an ‘annotation’ or a ‘prior to publication’ and ‘changes between revisions’?

No, that’s quite normal in England, the set up is different. Undergrad is much more major centered so graduates have most of the course work done. Also, at least in the past, support as a grad student was generally for three years (and maybe a bit) at least back in the 80s.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Paul Nurse stated: “I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it’s intimidating”

I am unaware of such incidents. Could you please identify what specific institutions have received FOI requests for “drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions”.

Steve, your first description does not mention FOI. Maybe there is a different process, such as some universities with Heads who are interested in quality control, plagiarism, etc. who are getting a feel for the sourcing of material used in papers by those under them.

“My message is for the President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse.

Sir Paul,

You have recently been quoted in the Guardian as saying:

“I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it’s intimidating.”

It surely would be intimidating, and I assume you are referring to climate scientists, but I know of no incidence where data has been requested for unpublished papers, perhaps you can tell me, or the press in general, “who” told you and what evidence you have that this is actually happening?

If it is happening I personally start a campaign to name and shame those doing it. And I know I will get support for this from the many sceptical blogs, where there is widespread incredulity at your remarks.

A second questions, which is one I had decided to ask you personally already before the remarkable statement you made to the Guardian is: Do you believe that once a paper is published all the data and methods used in reaching the conclusions stated in the paper should be available for scrutiny by other scientists, or even members of the public?

I do hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time, but would appreciate a response to my questions.

So in Nick Stokes’ strange world it is okay for Sir Paul Nurse to make unevidenced insinuations about people he disagrees with in high profile columns, but when people ask him to evidence those smears that is “harassment”?

Plus one request has magically expanded to 100 letters (sounds like the mysterious inflation of FOI requests that seemed to occur in the climategate debates). Of course, if all of those requests ask for the same thing the work required to deal with them is little more than that required to deal with one request (especially if handled electronically).

Nice to see you won’t let facts or evidence get in the way of a good smear, Nick. Keep up the good work.

AD: People who haven’t mixed with academics tend to believe that they are “clever” in the sense that they have developed an expertise in a certain area. Sir Paul Enfield has clearly come into his office with a plan to put all these “deniers” in there place and restore the reputation of the climate community in the UK. In order to achieve this end he’s come up with a “cunning plot” which involves explaining to people that the scientists involved are merely ordinary scientists going about their business being harried by a well-organised and well-funded group, consisting mainly of flat-earthers and creationists. He hasn’t even made preliminary enquiries about who he’s attacking, in fact he’s said that the sceptical bloggers aren’t scientists. In short he’s a man who may, nay must have, many scientific qualities because he’s received the Nobel Prize, but outside of that he appears to lack the ability to plan a campaign, consistently underestimating his enemies, and telling self-evident porky pies (lies) in the naive belief that nobody will know because they’re not scientists, or will not check because they’re not scientists. He appears to be an unworldly bundler, not worthy of the post of President of the Royal Society (although in this case he’s only one in a long line of duffers to have held this post) and will be a liability if they want to cook up another cover up for the UEA.

Does one really have to? Nurse himself indicates that he did not check the veracity of the claim.

‘If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time.’

Now, if Steve McIntyre were Nurse, we would ask steve.

1. before you made this hearsay claim did you ask to see a copy of the FOIA request. that would be a bombshell! Did you ask this person to get you a copy?

2. Since you say ‘if true’ that indicates that you did not check the source. Why would you risk bismerching the reputation of the Royal Society by publsihing hearsay, hearsay you had the opportunity to check.

3. Since the Royal society is looking into these matters, will you ask the people who told you this to submit these comments officially.

The shocking thing is that a President of the Royal society engages in spreading hearsay and he knows full well that it might not be true and he avoids the simple task of checking.

Imagine that I told you that CRU had denied my FOIA, would you just run with a blog post or actually ask me for the evidence. You’d ask for the evidence because it would make a much more devastating post. Here Nurse avoids checking the source, knows he hasnt checked the source, knows that if he had the details right it would be a much better story.

‘I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it’s intimidating”

I am telling the truth. I had been ‘told’ these things. Also, many researchers are getting requests, maybe one or two requests asked for drafts, sorry that my sentence made it appear that many were getting these requests. My exact words were ‘among other things’ which should indicate to any sensible reader that the requests for drafts were the exception rather than the rule. And finally, I qualified my statement by saying “if true” which should indicate that I’m not sure about what I said, but I was rushed, and under a lot of pressure and ya I get hate mail, one guy was rude and asked me to supply details about these charges and insinuated that monty Python made jokes about me and that it was illegal to attend UAE. It’s intimidating you know.

On a broader stage, I believe that Nurse’s mission is to reinforce the importance of the Royal Society motto (‘on the word of no one’) through regularly propagating transparent lies. Indeed, in this respect Nurse fulfills the critical societal role illustrated by the The Monty Python team – the professional village idiot.

Interesting, too, to read that he overlapped at the UEA with Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, OBE, FRS, etc., etc.

The most likely source is the current kerfuffle at the UVA.
The initial subpoena was probably quite expansively worded, as the aim was to see the work process.
What this has to do with the UK is another matter.

Among lawyers it is commonplace to draft, re-draft, and re-re-draft documents prior to obtaining execution of the final draft. If an issue arises as to the interpretation of that final draft, or the process of negotiation which lead to it, including what representations may have been made along the way, it would not be unusual for an interested party to seek disclosure of the drafts and the annotations to the drafts notwithstanding that the primary document has become the final signed version. A request for disclosure of “all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions” need not imply that the request was made with respect to an as-yet unpublished paper. Perhaps a published paper has become the subject of some controversy, and someone is now trying to discover how it came to take its final form.

McIntyre: haven’t heard of any incidents in which anyone requested “drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive version”, let alone “lots of requests” of this nature to multiple scientists

Cuccinelli requests UVA papers/note books/envelopes/etc that any one of tens of people have touched.

May not be FOI but certainly a step too far as even you once suggested.

you could check this site for some of the ludicrous requests made in UK (how many have been privately submitted?)

This has nothing to do with interfering with scientific work product during the generation of same product; this is archival material and the production of same will involve mostly lawyers and IT staff. Very much an apples-and-oranges situation.

Further, the Cuccinelli action is a state action against a university, the costs of compliance would have been a tiny fraction of what the university has spent fighting it.

I might at one time have agreed that this was ‘a step too far’ but the actions of the ‘climate science’ community in the meantime have convinced me otherwise. I am now prepared to assume that anyone participating in the climate-science field now has something nefarious to hide UNLESS they act to prove otherwise.

This has nothing to do with Nurse’s charge that people have been asked for drafts of papers that havent been publsihed yet. UVA request is for historical documents.

“I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it’s intimidating”

1. In UVA the researcher is not the subject of the request. his institution is.
2. The specific charge is that LOTS of researchers are being asked for ALL DRAFTS, PRIOR TO PUBLICATION

That would mean that people are requesting drafts of papers that havent been published. Who knows how people find out about papers before they are published.. I dunno do people announce when they submit papers?

Re: steven mosher (May 26 13:55),“2. The specific charge is that LOTS of researchers are being asked for ALL DRAFTS, PRIOR TO PUBLICATION”
That’s not true, in many ways. He didn’t say “LOTS of researchers”. He said “among other things” – it’s likely that this was a single instance. And he said “all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication…” – prior to qualifies drafts, not the asking. And yes, it’s redundant.

He said “some researchers who are getting lots of requests”. He did NOT say that it was a single instance. Nick, do you believe that Nurse had a factual basis for his allegations. Or that he is simply spreading rumours??

Re: Steve McIntyre (May 26 16:00),
I believe it’s factual that he’s been told that. And I don’t have reason to disbelieve what he’s been told. He didn’t, BTW, say that it was in climate science.

When you say “requests for, among other things,…”, what follows are examples of the kinds of requests. Each could well be a single instance.

Steve: Nurse’s full quote shows he is talking about climate science:

But he said freedom of information had “opened a Pandora’s box. It’s released something that we hadn’t imagined … there have been cases of it being misused in the climate change debate to intimidate scientists.

“I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it’s intimidating.”

Not in my world. I would not believe that such an intelligent man would use such a redundancy. On your reading he doesnt know how to write or speak. or maybe he speaks in a way that the common understanding implies a meaning much worse than his real meaning.

Mosh, it is possible to read Nurse’s comments as saying that the requests had been asking after all pre-publication drafts for a published paper.

“among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals”

The “prior to their publication” refers to the drafts not the papers. As such, it is perhaps not well stated but a less ridiculous charge.

It would seem unreasonable on the face of it to request such changes for papers if it is the final published version that is then subsequently referred to. It would make sense as a request however for items such as IPCC reports where important caveats etc that may have been present in the drafts are removed in the released version. There are differences between scientific papers and scientific reports.

Still, evidence for such a claim would provide Nurse with some vestige of credibility.

people are requesting drafts before the paper is published
this would be seen by everybody as disruptive.

on closer reading you seen the weasel room. People want to see the drafts after the paper is published. Far less onerous to the publication process.

So, Nurse has carefully constructed some sentences which sound one way on a casual reading, people get one idea, and if he is called to account he can parse them to
to mean something else entirely. One has to learn this manner of speaking and writing.

One only need keep in mind that once you’ve answered a FOI request,
you’ve already got the response in the can when someone else requests
the same information.

A dozen more requests for the same information makes demands on
clerical support staff time, but doesn’t impinge on the researcher/scientist
who did the study/testing/paper/report in the first place.

Similarly, FOI requests for computer programs, codes, and, yes, even
relevant e-mails involve the time of an IT officer looking into servers,
electronic storage mediums, and occasionally printouts, but the scientist
isn’t on point for that part of the action.

Additionally, each British public institution has it’s own FOI officer
who’s charged with routinely handling the opening and closing stages
and coordinating the in-betweens of any FOI request going into or
response coming out of the institution or involving it’s employees.

The institutions are supposed to have these positions staffed with
competent employees.

The only time a scientist/researcher would spend lots of time on a
FOI request is to “guide” the “right” information through the process…
or make to sure the naughty stuff didn’t surface.

Sir Paul and Bob Ward are trying to elicit input from individuals,
organizations, and institutions for the great effort:

The study will be led by Professor Geoffrey Boulton and a high-level working group. The society has launched a call for evidence and we are seeking input from academia, business, industry, Government, interest groups and members of the public to inform this important project. We welcome submissions as soon as possible, and before the 5 August 2011.

“A dozen more requests for the same information makes demands on
clerical support staff time, but doesn’t impinge on the researcher/scientist
who did the study/testing/paper/report in the first place.”

You assume there is clerical support staff available for this. Sadly, no.

The give away is the comment by Myles Allen about his battle with me. This is about coming battles with the Information Commissioner at UEA, Oxford and the Met Office.

This is obviously all about this IPCC document which, ostensibly, was about making the changes that resulted from the IAC Review but this bit was slipped in at the last minute by Thomas Stocker to help the case for refusing disclosure of IPCC documents. The creation date of the document is 12 May 2011 – right in the middle of the meeting:

6bis 4 Confidentiality of draft reports

This issue was raised by the WG I co-chairs. Given the upcoming finalization of two Special Reports
The Task Group deemed this issue important for consideration.

6bis 4.1 Task Group consideration

The Task Group noted that clear guidance is needed on what the rules are for the confidentiality of draft reports and other documentation during drafting and review. On one hand, there is a need for transparency and openness of the assessment process. On the other hand, publicizing drafts have serious drawbacks. There is a risk that drafts contain errors or statements that are still unbalanced and that have to be corrected at a later stage. These could prematurely circulate in the public domain, creating confusion, and that would be a bad service of IPCC to society. Therefore, the Task Group believes that drafts should be kept confidential until acceptance of the full report IPCC-XXXIII/Doc. 12, p.12

6bis 4.2 Proposed decision (cat II)

All drafts of IPCC assessment reports (including the final draft) will be considered to be confidential material, not for public distribution quotation, or citation until acceptance by the Panel of the final IPCC report. The first order draft, second order draft and the final draft, the expert and government review comments, and the author responses to those comments on both drafts will be made available on the IPCC open website on a clearly visible place, within xx weeks after the acceptance of the report by the Panel.

I think the Panel members were bamboozled by the sheer volume of papers presented to them and did not think this through. I will bet many did not even read this document and did not know what they were voting for.

The Panel did not change the “Principles Governing IPCC Work” and its unambiguous statement that assessment process is to be open and transparent, so we now have an ad hoc decision that directly conflicts not only with the IPCC Principles but with the Aarhus Convention. Any party to that convention that willingly agreed to this IPCC decision is in breach of Aarhus Article 3(7). In reply to a written question on the IPCC and the Aarhus Convention from Graham Stringer MP our Climate Change Minister replied:

However, the UK is a party to the convention and we will continue encouraging the IPCC to continue to be as open in terms of its processes and procedures as possible.

It is no good Sir Paul and his pals lobbying the government over the FOIA. As far as I am aware no one has complained about requests dealt with under the FOIA regime. It it the Aarhus Convention and the EIR that is applied to environmental information.

David Holland, I’m confused as to the problem with the new IPCC rules. They are saying they will release everything publicly at a certain time.
Steve: only after everything is done. Previously reviewers could ask to see First Draft Review COmments after the First Draft procedure was done, for example.

Steve,
I see no change Appendix A 4.1 in the decisions at the 33rd IPCC Session, so the clause remains:

All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process

MikeN,
No, the new IPCC decision simply puts what happened last time into the rules. They will only archive first and second drafts with the comments and responses. They have no plan to show the zero draft which on the TAR was very significant and they have no intention of publishing the Review Editors’ Reports.

However,since they are going to release the stuff on the web, they can hardly get away with stunt they used last time of sending the comments in hard copy to any Reviewer that asks for them during the review.

Lets be honest once climate gate blow up there was some nutters that came out of the wood work , I would not therefore be surprised to find that there has be frankly silly request for information . But its a situation very much of their own making, to-date its clear that FOI requests are treated with contempt by organization such as the CRU, while the IPCC seems to be going out of way to become less transparent in its dealings.

So yes Nurse may be right , but as a scientist he should know all about cause and affect .

Paul Nurse (voice over): As well as the e-mails, much criticism of Dr Jones centred on his reluctance to hand over data. The team at CRU had been receiving requests under the Freedom of Information Act, also known as FOI requests, for access to their scientific data.

Phil Jones: Well, we started getting some requests in, in about 2007, and we’d responded to those.

Paul Nurse: These are Freedom of Information requests…

Phil Jones: Yes. And they were specifically for basic station temperature data and also for the locatiions of the stations. The situation got a bit worse in July 2009 when we got 60 requests over a weekend.

Paul Nurse: Over one weekend?

Phil Jones: Over one weekend, when there was clearly some sort of co-ordination between…

Paul Nurse: Was that from different people?

Phil Jones: Different people. But there was clearly some co-ordination of the requests because they each asked for five countries in alphabetical order. I thought at the time it was just to waste our time, in order to deal with these requests and maybe to get the data together.

Paul Nurse: So this is an interesting dilemma that we have here really, because obviously science is based upon open access to data. But obviously you can also be disrupted by having, if you like, more legalistic attempts to get data or simply trying to waste people’s time. How do you sort of balance that?

Phil Jones: Well sometimes we get requests and, sometimes not through FOI, just from other scientists, we point them in the right direction as to where they might get the data. But when it became more, sort of, through the FOI, it really then became clear that it was some sort of harrassment.

Paul Nurse (voice over): This event raises questions about the openness of scientific research. Dr Jones and his team clearly felt persecuted. However, scientists do have to be open with their data.

It might be useful to think about the Human Genome Project, where similar issues came up about a decade ago, and there was clear discussion about this, and in the public genome sequencing laboratories, a real commitment, dedication to getting that data out into the public as soon as possible. And I think maybe there’s something to be learned from that, for climate science.

There were at least four independent reviews of the work of CRU. The reports found there was no evidence of dishonesty. They said splicing the temperature data wasn’t misleading, but this technique should have been made plain. They said generally the unit should have been more open. But crucially, they found no evidence of deliberate scientific malpractice.

This seems to have been the “greatest scientific scandal” that never really took place. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me at all, why it got blown out of proportion. It makes me wonder whether as scientists, we’re not perhaps well suited to dealing with situations like this, and perhaps let them run out of our control. I mean, the world is changing, the digital world with blogs, with tweets and so on, we’re perhaps not used to dealing with that, not able to cope with the sort of maelstrom of media attention that fell upon UEA during this event. I think there’s something to be learned here. We’ve got to think about how we defend our science, how we project ourselves to the public.

In the end, the integrity of climate science was not faulted. But somehow a leak of some ten-year-old e-mails did real damage to its reputation. In all the clamour, the science seems to have been left behind. I’ve come to meet James Delingpole, one of those who led the campaign.”

——————-

2 things that jump out to me….

He allowed Phil Jones to get away with – We responded to those requests…….

Ie it was a NO, you can’t have the data – does not get adressed..

Then Paul Nurse states:–

“But somehow a leak of some ten-year-old e-mails did real damage to its reputation.”

A clear attempt to mis-represent to the millions of BBC viewers, that the emails were all ten years old, When in fact they were up to a few weeks old, including the latest request for information and refuasl of it..

Paul Nurse must either know this, and choose to spin it, or is totally ignorant of the whole ‘climategate’ affair.

So yes Nurse may be right, but as a scientist he should know all about cause and affect.

I disagree, he cannot possibly be right. It cannot be right for Sir Paul Nurse to make such accusations in a leading London newspaper without being very specific – without saying who told him, without giving the names of the researchers they told him about, without giving the names of those who are sending those researchers ‘lots of requests’, without giving specific details and numbers of the requests, and above all without explaining why such behaviour, however unreasonable, could possibly be viewed as intimidating.

No, if Nurse was right then so was Goebbels. The Reich Minister of Propaganda’s facts weren’t always wrong, it was the way he told it, the things he left out and the conclusions his readers were meant to draw that were the problem. Enough already.

Keep in mind that this is the Grauniad (“Wrong about everything – all the time” according to a Daily Mash T-shirt), notorious for twisting and overhyping its stories and for putting up misleading headlines in support of its political agenda.
It is possible, in fact likely, that they have misrepresented Nurse’s comments.
I find it very hard to believe that this article really represents his opinions.
If it does, he clearly has no understanding of the issues (see BH for a list of errors) and he should resign.

Professor Nurse mislead the public on a BBC Horizon programme by stating that man made CO2 emissions were seven times natural emissions. Don’t expect a correction?
I think I’ll invite him around to see the fairies at the bottom of my garden?

Sorry about the plumber typo?
Remember that Lord Oxymoron in evidence to the House of Commons select commitee not only exagerated the number of FOI requests he also said something needed to be done to change the legislation.

FOI requests related to research are far less likely if your data is made publicly available with the appropriate metadata, with codes made available upon request. This victim card that some climate researchers have been playing with regards to FOI requests is rather a joke, IMO. Trying to fight this will get you into hot water. Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt apparently each have lawyers dealing with these issues; if they are worried about taking time away from research, I think stonewalling and fighting is far more costly in time than just meeting the FOI requests. They are presumably fighting for some principle or academic freedom, but if you are a govt employee this is a fight that won’t be won.

IMO, Nurse’s money quote is this one:

“Scientists are going to have to get used to the idea that transparency means being transparent to your critics as well as your allies. You cannot pick and choose to whom you are transparent,”

Bob Ward from LSE (my alma mater) says at CE that the “money quote” is in fcat his. He also says that “There’s a massive double standards because a lot of the people submitting these requests are themselves not transparent at all. They don’t reveal their sources of funding or the details of what they’re doing behind the scenes.” I’ve asked him to name names, to tell us who these people are; clearly not Steve M.

True and in least once instance the problem was that although the journal rules required the data to be available , Jones decide to ignore them , hence the need for people to request them via FOI. In science its general rule that if it can’t be replicated its and survive to critical review is its not worth a dam . To do this replications and to carry our effective critical review certain information is required. If the people making the claims cannot or will not supply this information or data , than their claims could indeed to be consider not worth a dam. And that should be true even in climate science or even especially in climate science given the dramatic nature of the claims and the demanded for massive changes that this claims are used to support.

What a wonderful phrase. It absolves the speaker from needing or providing any evidence that their concern is actually occurring.

I guess you can’t blame Nurse. He, of course, has an agenda he’s promoting. He can’t be expected to be impartial. But even a novice journalist should ask the obvious follow-up questions to nail down where this “FoI aggression” is actually happening.

It would seem we need transparency with regards to FOIs… bit of a conundrum really.

Let the sun shine – make it obligatory to list incoming FOIs on the homepage of each faculty. Date, sender and subject. No speculations and no need for a FOI to ask how many FOIs they have received.
Of course universities could also do this voluntarily to prove/argue how much a burden they are.

No speculations and no need for a FOI to ask how many FOIs they have received. Let’s have transparency on the transparency laws!

I wonder whether Sir Paul is referring obliquely to the IPCC who seem to be changing the rules (again) so that no drafts of AR5 and no comments on drafts are to be released by anyone until the full report is produced. Since the IPCC seems unwilling to change even the most egregious errors in AR4 this means that any subsequent comments will be ignored.

Perhaps Sir Paul is trying to justify the IPCC position by rephraseing the argument in the context of scientific papers since AR5 will be a “scientific paper”, won’t it …?

I have not made any FoI requests for drafts of scientific papers. I have, however, been accused of requesting data for papers prior to the papers’ publication. The accusation is false, but has been put about by Prof. Mike Baillie at Queen’s University Belfast. In fact, Baillie had had almost all the data for decades, had published several papers based on the data, and had retired. Some details are athttp://www.informath.org/apprise/a3900.htm

What I take from Paul Nurse’s comments is that, apparently, the climate scientists thought they could do “science” AND be heavily involved in radical political agendas that directly benefited their enterprise, and while doing so, NOT expect to get some push back by the tax paying public (who, after all, are paying their salaries while also being the targets of the CAGW activists).

Yep. They define themselves to be ‘climate scientists’ and reserve to themselves the rights of super special privileges unknown to mere mortal taxpayers. They have elevated treating the general public with gross contempt to an art form.

By coincidence I have been reading the history of the fall of the communist states in Europe in 1989. Senior party apparatchiks behaved in exactly the same way right up until they were overthrown in all those countries.

A total straw man claim. Any such requests could simply be refused and indeed since we all do these things in word processors most earlier drafts wouldn’t even be available to the writter without a computer forensics expert.

Here Paul, I’ll solve that problem for you. Send an automatic response of “No” to all such requests and just answer the real requests you are getting for the data you worked from and the process you used to manipulate it so that people who paid for your work can tell if your results are real, reproducible… you know… SCIENCE.

As far as I can tell, the institutions themselves block/deny all FOI possible, so they never reach the scientist at all. If Nurse is referring the the Mann subpoena, it is 1 “one” case, and a strange one (and not FOI at all).

I am not the president of the Royal Society nor giving a newspaper interview. My impression is based on the data presented at CA I believe regarding an FOIA request (which was granted) for dispositions of FOIA requests at UEA–almost all were denied, even the easy ones.

Nurse made a hearsay claim. He claims he was told. My question: well, did you ask the
person for proof, because the proof would be GREAT.

“As far as I can tell, the institutions themselves block/deny all FOI possible, so they never reach the scientist at all. If Nurse is referring the the Mann subpoena, it is 1 “one” case, and a strange one (and not FOI at all).”

For this to be similar Craig would have to say ” I’ve been told that all institutions”

In which case I’d ask him

1. who told you this
2. did you ask that person for the back up data?

When he reports “as far as he knows” he is claiming something about his knowledge.
and look what you can do. you can ask him the basis of his knowledge and he answers you.
See that you are doing EXACTLY what Nurse should have done. and everytime you do it
you demonstrate the fundamental difference between what you can do here and what Nurse should have done. You see how skepticism works now. X makes a claim. You ask X for evidence. When we see Nurse NOT exercising the skeptical method, we of course have good reason to dismiss him and his views.

What I found so terribly ridiculous was the assertion (such as in the headline) that the point of FOI requests was to bog down researchers to delay their future publications. Seriously?

Furthermore, there’s Ward’s statement at the end: ***…But he added that researchers should be able to have confidential conversations with colleagues and researchers in other universities, and that it was increasingly difficult for researchers to do that by email.

“There’s no other walk of life where every conversation you have ought to be made public,” he said…***

That’s totally bogus. Ask pretty much any public-sector employee in the US, where no email is confidential. And obviously not every email is made public, let alone “every conversation.”

More heresay: The keynote of a math & science forum I recently attended stated that he had just been to a National Academy of Sciences conference where a “prominent climate modeler” gave a talk (he didn’t identify the modeler by name).

The climate modeler commented that FOIA’s were flooding him – demanding virtually every email he sent, and that it was becoming impossible to get work done – –

(I admit this is my paraphrase of another’s paraphrase.) However the message was clear, and at the table I sat there were complaints about ‘skeptic simpletons’ from another NAS member.

If you think this had not been done, take a look at the EPA faq for employees on working papers

———————————-
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) defines working files as: “rough notes, calculations, or drafts assembled or created and used to prepare or analyze other documents. Also called working papers.”

Everyone creates working files, and they are very often a mixture of record and nonrecord materials. How to manage them is the question. If working files are poorly organized and inscrutable to anyone but the creator, identifying record material to document program activity is difficult. If records and nonrecords are mixed in one voluminous working file, the Agency is forced to manage an even larger volume of material than is necessary.

Basically, you need to make sure that records needed to document Agency activity are filed in official files and working files are maintained separately and kept to a minimum.

They were circulated or made available to employees, other than the creator, for official purposes such as approval, comment, action, recommendation, follow-up, or to communicate with agency staff about agency business; and

They contain unique information, such as substantive annotations or comments included therein, that adds to a proper understanding of the agency’s formulation and execution of basic policies, decisions, actions, or responsibilities.

Each EPA office is responsible for establishing procedures that identify which documents are part of the official files, who is responsible for maintaining them, and when they are placed in the record keeping system. Staff can then determine which documents in their possession need to be filed and retained as records, and which documents can be safely recycled or destroyed.working papers

What the hell, here is a quick one written on Jan 6 2011 from Chris Horner, David Schnare and Bob Marshall, asking for everything UVa has from Michael Mann including all drafts, etc. So yes, Virginia, it is an issue

Regulation 12(4)(d) is cited because the 1,001 composite data sets and the lists of sites from which the data is drawn was created in 2006 as a first ‘draft’ of work that was
meant to be carried forward and refined with a view to future publication. Whilst there has been the passage of some time since the creation of the first set of 1,001 composite records, staff at the CRU have returned to this data recently as part of a project funded by NERC, which commenced in May 2010, that encapsulates this NW Eurasian tree-ring study, and which will be completed no later than October 2012. The data will be revised in the near future as the project moves towards publication of papers based on the work in constructing the composites.

There is an excellent letter in response in todays Guardian, by Maurice Frankel, pointing out some (but not all) of the errors in the arguments of Nurse and Ward (See Bishop Hill).

He points out that
“existing safeguards address many of his concerns”
and that
“It was the misguided attempt to deny ammunition to critics that led to the Climategate fiasco. “,
and that
“the campaign of requests to the UEA climatic research unit was partly the result of its own “unhelpful” response to earlier requests.”

What Frankel omits to mention is that it is a fundamental principle of FOI that it is “motive blind”, that is, the reason for asking for the information, or what the requester wants to do with it, is irrelevant.
So Paul Nurse’s speculative and prejudiced assumptions about the motives of people like David Holland and Steve can and should be dismissed.

However it is open to the recipient to reject requests which are
“vexatious” (section 14(1) of the Act).
Steve- as mentioned previously, “vexatious” has a technical meaning in law that was developed long before FOI. It also occurs when seeking to dismiss suits. It has no relevance to my request for Yamal data.

The UK FOI guidance notes are quite specific that “The term “vexatious” is to have its ordinary meaning and there is no link with legal definitions from other contexts (ed vexatious litigants)”.

A developing series of FOI requests seeking previously undisclosed material in the David Kelly case is currently being rejected as vexatious essentially on the grounds that they are all from a single individual and addressing the same “subject”.

5 Trackbacks

[…] for climate scientists who wish to evade Freedom of Information requests. Many in the skeptic camp, Steve McIntyre prominent among them, regard the issue of “harassment by FOI” to be a canard, and […]

[…] Are any readers aware of any such requests? Or is this more fantasizing by climate scientists? Like the time reversal mechanism assumed by Nature when they blamed data obstruction by climate scientists back in 2005 on FOI requests in summer 2009. –Is this a Nursery Story? Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit […]